When last we visited our heroes, mounting distrust was in danger of dissolving a working relationship with tens of thousands of dollars hanging in the balance. Solutions were found that involved nothing more than talk therapy and things were back on track. Poky Stick is available for sale at WalMart, everybody's paid up on Poky Stick, Dance Wolf is "Not a Hypothetical #3" and Poky Stick II is in the can.

Thus we come to the crux of our dilemma.

Reviewing our players from before

- Tom, director of Dance Wolf, friend to Harry and June, whom I convinced not to direct PS2, who underwrote it instead

- Dick, producer of Fishing Days, who is distancing himself from Harry and June as rapidly as possible

- Harry, screenwriter of Poky Stick, Dance Wolf and Poky Stick II, as well as director of PS2 and a producer (largely in name only) of all three films

- June, internist, mother of April, money behind PS, DW, PS2 and an as-yet unnamed project they're hell-bent on shooting this summer

- April, actress whose mother pays for all her movies

- your humble narrator, sound mixer/post supervisor/de-facto producer who met Dick through Reddit and likes all the players listed so far and whom has managed to find himself in a trusted position where his input on the situation outlined below will be taken seriously.

Let's introduce a few new players

- Alan Smithee (Alan), director of Poky Stick, cinematographer of Dance Wolf, didn't touch PS2 with a ten-foot pole. Somewhere in my "hidden gold" files I have production audio that was in PS (before I mixed it) in which Alan can be clearly heard saying "*oh god the camera broke what do I do what do I do what do I do?*"

- John Doe (JD), location sound mixer of Poky Stick and Dance Wolf. He did ...okay... on Poky Stick, particularly how little he was being paid. I'm feeling the pain on Dance Wolf because he fucked up some really obvious shit. Occam's Razor slashes down to "he was probably stoned most of the time." The boom guy sure was.

- Choppy McChopperson, (Choppy), the new editor brought on for PS2. He was on-set for everything, playing the job of DIT (digital imaging technician), thereby eliminating himself from bitching about anything he had to edit later. He saw everything minutes after it was shot and dropped it in the timeline to make sure all the shots were there, a luxury that neither Poky Stick nor Dance Wolf had available.

I have never met JD or Choppy. I like Alan as a person but think he's mediocre as a DP and incompetent as a director.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

PS2: It's More than a Game

So Tom begged off PS2 and Harry directed it. PS2 was shot between December 26, 2012 and January 15th, 2013 in Texas, where none of us wanted to be. The production was not without its hiccups:

1) The DP (Alan's DP on Poky Stick) was fired on Day 1 for incompetence. Apparently Alan was more of a director/DP on Poky Stick, which gives me a little more respect for him. The new DP was

2) JD, who was on set to be the sound mixer, but took over as DP on Day 2 (all of Day 1's shots were deemed too terrible to use, which... well, read on). JD has never shot a movie before. So the new sound mixer was

3) JD's WIFE. Who is not a sound mixer.

4) The antagonist, a "bad girl", quit on Day 2. Not sure why. Perhaps she didn't have the luxury of knowing Harry and June and knowing ahead of time what a three-cornered clusterfuck PS2 would be. Perhaps because the film requires her to strip down to her skivvies and once she saw how badly things were going, she decided it wasn't worth showing her thonged ass on camera in such a terrible movie for $125 a day. Another day of reshoots, and the new antagonist, who does in fact strip down to her skivvies, is not really built like someone you would pay to strip down to her skivvies. I'm sure she's a lovely person.

5) Production did not finish on time (shocker!) so reshoots were necessary in late February. Harry paid for them on his credit card, probably to the tune of $20k.

Now let's review the finances

- Tom is $20k into the film and is credited as "executive producer." He has not been paid back.

- Harry is $20k into the film and is credited as writer, director, and "executive producer." He answers phones at a property management company for a living.

- June is $50k into the film and is credited as "executive producer." She wants to sell this thing quickly so she can get rolling on yet another terrible script, one SHE wrote and which Harry rewrote, that will, as always, star April.

- A distributor (that shall not be named) has offered Harry and June $50k for PS2, sight unseen. The distributor is only in the picture because Dick knows them. Tom does not, but Tom still used Dick's connection to introduce Harry and June to them. They paid June $50k for the $200k film Poky Stick. Their offer to purchase is largely based on the production quality of Fishing Days (the last film Dick really had any influence over) and the radical increase in quality of Poky Stick once I started mixing it. That was rather long, but it boils down to this: the distributor wants to pay for PS2 because he liked the way Dick and I polished poop the last two times.

Right off the bat we can see that the movie is losing $40k with this deal. Which, sadly enough, makes it the most successful of Harry & June's movies. Tom and Dick are pissed off about this because they had a deal with said distributor for another film that the distributor reneged on, despite the fact that the film was selling out theaters. They're also pissed off at Harry and June because they think they're players now and are fundamentally immune to criticism.

Now let's talk about the film

It's awful.

It's Day the Clown Died bad.

The script was bad enough. The execution has exceeded the threshold of failure outlined by its stunning ineptitude, however.

- the whole thing looks like it was lit with a torchiere.

- the camera moves look like they were executed by a sound guy. Scratch that - they look like they were executed by a drunk sound guy.

- the actors look like the kind of West Texans that you might find on short notice who will take their clothes off on camera for $125 a day.

- the villain - a high school mascot - is not only stunningly politically incorrect, he's also laugh-out-loud funny looking. It's like a horror movie about The Noid.

- the special effects are stunning, and not in a good way. There's a scene in which someone is hit by a truck. This causes "intestines" to fly out of their butt like snakes out of a gag peanut brittle can.

- Nobody looks good. Nobody. Including April (the producer's daughter and erstwhile protagonist), who isn't sympathetic, isn't central to the film, and isn't any sort of standout in any way. Call me old-fashioned, but if you're going to pay someone to take their clothes off on camera, you owe them the courtesy of delivering imagery that isn't pure cringe.

Now let's talk about the reception

Well, Tom (the director friend who has tens of thousands of dollars in it) watched it and hated it. Told me he was physically disgusted. Wrote an 11 page, helpful document about how it could be fixed. Dragged over four friends to watch it, who all hated it. Not in a "Birdemic" way, either. In a "day the clown cried" way.

Dick (the producer friend who involuntarily has tens of thousands of dollars in it) watched it and hated it and said it should never be released.

Tom and Dick made one of their interns watch it. He hated it. He wrote a 5-page document about everything that needed to be re-shot in order for it to be a movie.

These two documents went to Harry, the screenwriter/director, who hated them and refused to humor any of the suggestions, arguing that Choppy McChopperson (who is not only the editor, but is also his cousin) has "locked cut." In other words, there will be no changes.

Harry further forwarded the documents on to Choppy, who proceeded to send Tom (remember - he's an executive producer on this pile, and therefore Choppy's direct superior) a 1000-word hate email.

AND NOW THEY GIVE IT TO ME

I'm supposed to mix this pile. More than that, I'm supposed to "pass verdict" on it. Long story short, Tom and Dick have been generous. It doesn't really matter, though, because… well, let me get technical for a minute.

Movies are typically recorded, "sound-wise," using what we call "second system." This means that I've got a recorder that I control completely, recording isolated tracks of all wireless microphones (ISOs) as well as an isolated track of any boom mice being used. I then send the camera (a Red Scarlet, in this case) two tracks of audio, generally boom on one side and a mix of all the ISOs on the other. It all gets synced up in post and you use what sounds best. The audio record pathway on a Scarlet, however, is so terrible that most sound mixers have taken an oath to give it nothing better than a Comtek signal (super-shitty FM broadcast "client headset" audio).

The excitement begins when I open the movie in Pro Tools. All the audio is squared off. Distorted. As in, "sounds like it came through the wrong side of a Marshall stack." It's visibly hashed - simply looking at the waveforms indicates that the audio is bad, never mind listening to it. So I have a chat with Choppy.

Remember - Choppy wasn't just the editor, Choppy was the DIT - that means it was Choppy's job to take all the files shot, all the audio recorded, and keep track of it. Make it make sense. Arrange it so that future editors and sound mixers can put things together.

This is complicated by the fact that the project was shot on Red - which works with proxies, which you don't need to understand other than if you don't marry the audio and video before you generate your proxies (which you do to have something to edit with), you lose the timecode and you can't do it automagically, you have to do it by hand. As in, "line up the clap of the slate with the pop on the audio file" for every take.

Guess who didn't marry the files prior to proxy?

Guess who didn't even make sure things had filenames that matched the script?

Guess who didn't, in fact, even listen to the ISOs?

Guess who cut the film with the audio that was on the camera, totally ignoring the audio recorder entirely?

…which, by the way, the soundguy-cum-cinematographer didn't bother to check levels on even one day?

So now we've got a film that not only looks like ass, but all of the audio is distorted. All of it. But it doesn't have to be. Clean audio exists - probably. You asked Choppy to sync up ten clips just so you can get a better idea what you're dealing with. After four days, he syncs two.

And those two are clean.

But to get clean audio for the film, the whole film needs to be synced.

By hand.

Every clip.

And then it'll still be the worst movie in the world, it just won't have sound so horrible it would never actually pass QAQC.

"SO WHAT DO YOU THINK?"

June wants to know what you think of the movie, and what they should do. She's $50k into this.

Tom wants to know how he'll ever see his movie again. He's $20k into this.

Dick doesn't have an opinion, but he's also out $20k on this.

Harry thinks it's the best movie evar. Words to the contrary are clearly poisonous barbs intended to crush his self-esteem.

Cutty thinks he's the best editor evar.

The distributor hasn't seen it. They've got an offer on the table.

You're due five figures for mixing it.

The money that they get for this is going to go into Dance Wolf, which still isn't in edit because this turd has tied up all the money, which is also five figures.

_____________________________________________

Okay, Hubski. Untie this Gordian knot. Keep Tom, Dick and June solvent without destroying any relationships.

Ready,

Steady,

GO